Ice, Day 2

So, this was the day after everything iced up. The sun came out and glowed through every tree. This is the view of Gabe's Garden in front of our house. There is a slide right in the middle, there. And note the mailbox.



Shiny trees! This is the trench leading to the front door.



This giant stalactite should have been a tip-off that we had an ice dam forming on the shaded rear roof. Not too long after this, we had water dribbling in a couple of windows.



Here is the view up our little street. Note the mailboxes.



I snapped photos on the way to work.



Ice on the power lines.



Cows. Note that they are staying very close to that barn. Two feet of rock-hard snow is tough to walk through even when you are a side of beef.



Typical street scene.

We tried to get someone in to remove our house's ice dams, but every company but one was booked up. They finally started returning my calls a few days later, after the leaking had stopped. Chris did a fantastic job improvising a way to melt a relief channel through the ice dam, and I rigged up plastic bags and buckets to minimize the damage. Finally, warmer weather brought rain and melting. You would think that the rain would have made things worse for a while, but thankfully no. And I suspect that the water damage is just cosmetic. Thank goodness we didn't shell out the $1800 that could have bought us emergency services from the one company that wasn't booked up!